


Make waves in a low tide

by saynomore



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternative Universe- Still Famous, Bottom Liam, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Sexuality Issues, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-20 00:18:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4766375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saynomore/pseuds/saynomore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You can't just turn down a flight on a private jet with one Zayn Malik, now can you?" Liam thinks he's good at feigning confidence. He's got the muscles to back it up, and when he wants to, he can be pretty menacing. He knows because he's always had a right laugh with Louis going through the post game pictures. </p><p>"S'pose that's true, in the same way that when you know Liam Payne's on his off season, you've got to show him how to really live."</p><p>or Liam is a footballer, Zayn is on his third world tour, and this isn't the first time they've done this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make waves in a low tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bad Samaritan (quodpersortem)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodpersortem/gifts).



> Major major apologies are in order to both my prompter and the lovely organizers for me being late with this fic, but I really wanted to make it worth the amazing prompt I was given. I've had such a great time working with these characters and I hope that it's better late than never!

"You made it." Liam hates the way Zayn's voice is always so smooth. He sounds like he could've just smoked a fag in the private bathroom, ashes carelessly tipped into the sink. 

"Course I did. You can't just turn down a flight on a private jet with one Zayn Malik, now can you?" Liam thinks he's good at feigning confidence. He's got the muscles to back it up, and when he wants to, he can be pretty menacing. He knows because he's always had a right laugh with Louis going through the post game pictures. 

"S'pose that's true, in the same way that when you know Liam Payne's on his off season, you've got to show him how to really live." Zayn's eyes glint mischievously in the deep plane lights. He swings his bag down and takes a seat next to Liam, folding his hands together. "But seriously, how are you?" Zayn's just inches away from Liam now, after months of being across continents. Their connection when they're together is so great that it almost has them fooled., until the inevitability takes them over when Liam gets called in to do a training, or Zayn gets called off to be featured on someone else's album. When you have a sold out world tour, Liam supposes, it's also a given. He hopes Zayn can't always see the way he affects Liam, written all over his face like a map of every moment they've spent together. Zayn looks- 

Liam looks down instead, kicking resolutely at his duffel. There's no particular reason why he brought his clothes in his team duffel, other than resorting to habit. He feels like a schoolboy, carting around his track team bag like a shield to anyone who may question all that he'd fought for. It's insane to hide when they've already reached the point of no return. 

With the lightest touch, Zayn spreads his hand over Liam's knee. It almost breaks his focus, the formation of words on his tongue slipping before he gets himself back on track. "I've been, um. Pretty good, actually. Just came back from Wolverhampton, and Ruthie's pregnant." Zayn smiles effortlessly, squeezing slightly over the denim. 

"You're gonna be an uncle, yeah?" 

"Yeah." They smile, and for the first time Liam really allows himself to look at Zayn. The last time they saw each other, Zayn was vibrating onstage, a work of art under the bright lights. He was even more vibrant later that night, twisted up in sheets with the stage colors painted all over his skin. But that was almost a year ago. The one thing that fame has taught Liam is that he should never underestimate how quickly things can change. 

He looks as beautiful as ever, changing his aesthetics with the seasons and never ceasing to be more or less heart stopping. His clothes today remind Liam of their somewhat younger selves, when he first saw pictures of Zayn on the red carpet, on the Telly, plastered over billboard lists and albums. He dressed more simply back then, in mostly black with just two or three tattoos on his skin if you were really looking close. He's even got his old rucksack tucked between his ankles, the same worn material with his collected iron-on patches. 

"How are you? Jesus, I'm the most ungrateful guest." Zayn lightly knocks into him now, chastising the sentiment with his body. 

"Honestly? Fuckin bored, man. The shows are great, you know, a culmination of everything I've been working for the past five years. Still can't seem to shake the feeling like I'm going to wake up from this elaborate mess." Liam knows the feeling. Every time he gets out on the pitch, passing the ball to a player he'd had up on his wall as a boy. Slipping the jersey over his shoulders and catching the name in the mirror. Watching the games back, which he really tries not to do, and seeing himself run around in some kind of dream world. It's unshakeable, the feeling like he's going to snap back to the real world at any given moment. 

"And then- it's like, all of a sudden I've got everything I ever wanted. It's all spread out right in front of me. Mum's got the new house, and Saf's going to the private school with the prime minister's niece-" 

"No fucking way." Zayn nods ardently, catching back wisps of laughter, bits of his smile resting in his eyes. 

"People always ask what it feels like to have everything you ever wanted, you know? But I don't." The honesty of the remark stings. It's not something Liam likes thinking about, so he chooses not to. Sometimes he wraps himself up in it, in all the compliments and praise and the girls and boys who want in his pants like a blanket, so he doesn't have to think, doesn't have to face the fact that he's really just-

Alone. 

"I know." They look at each other with no resilience, with no boundaries and no fabrications. Liam can feel Zayn's warmth from under his black tee shirt. They almost kiss.

Skidding towards the ground, the plane jumps them away from each other like a chaperone. "Thirsty?" The ice clinks as Zayn scoops it into a blue crystal glass. He doesn't wait for a reply, and pulls out a can of ginger ale from the bar. The liquid fizzles satisfyingly into the glass between them, before Zayn hands it over.

"Thanks." 

"Anytime." Liam is wary of them, not wanting to go quite so far in the first few hours he gets to have Zayn here. Aside from the pilot and copilot, he flies alone, no entourage roaming about the cabin like the first time he set out on a sold out tour. Catching up on lost time has never felt nicer. Zayn keeps stealing sips through their somewhat lighter conversation, and they feel contentment setting in over their little space in the clouds. 

\--

"I'm getting to go backstage? How could I possibly thank you for such VIP treatment?" Zayn cuffs him in the shoulder land anorts, walking cockily ahead with somewhat false bravado. They'd landed in Toronto a few hours earlier, the flight only forty minutes from the airport in New York where they met. "Oh, you think you're getting this experience for free? Trust me, you're gonna have to pay me really, really well later." 

It's an offhand comment but it still leaves Liam speechless, not really ever sure what to say. Zayn can be conservative with his words, to the point where sometimes he doesn't know where they stand at all. And then sometimes he isn't. 

"I don't know if I brought enough money with me." 

He takes the bait and couldn't be happier. Zayn sidles up to him then, leaning in the doorframe with his eyebrows raised. Liam doesn't think he could look more attractive. "Then we'll just have to work something else out." Zayn's eyes trip their way down his body, and Liam feels an intoxicating mix of embarrassment and lust come over him. Zayn laughs, and brings his hand up to brush Liam's cheek. "Really, though. What's mine is yours." 

Liam finds a spot in the back of the green room, right across from the large vanity mirrors where Zayn is getting his hair done. Liam knows that Zayn's hairdresser is a lovely woman be used of the way she makes him laugh. Every once in awhile Zayn catches him looking in the mirror, and his face softens from the joke's come down when they lock gazes. There are people milling about that Liam doesn't know, and so he pulls out his phone as mostly a diversion. He acutely does not watch Zayn undress, snacking on a basket of cheese and grapes laying about.

Liam's willpower is so good that he doesn't even glance until he sees the blur of full clothing covering his body. Zayn is looking at himself in the mirror, tugging his black shirt about and fastening the buttons. There's a city of new tattoos across his upper and lower arms, no longer just errant or when he 'felt like it'. The black cotton is buttoned all the way up to the collar now, and his hair is somewhat softer compared to the hard look that's scattered across billboards. He's got just the tiniest hit of stage makeup on his face, a bit of extra darkness around his eyes and color to his cheeks. The ripped denim and rough leather boots are certainly nothing new. Liam can't explain how he looks slightly cleaner and more simplistic with the assortment of bracelets circling his tattoos, as if keeping them from peeling off. 

"You look incredible." He doesn't even attempt to bay the awe in his voice. Zayn's smile is tampered and sweet when it bounces back at Liam in the mirror, but his usual sense of overconfidence turns the grin cocky. Zayn is electric with the anticipatory adrenaline, the feeling of near worship that he gets when he walks onstage. Liam knows the feeling well, but he's never been given the total honor and curse of performing solo. For better or worse, he's always got his teammates to back him up, to divert and divide the attention up so it doesn't become a frenzy. He likes being famous for his abilities and not his looks, for his talent and not who he fucks. To athletes, sexual partners are a liability. To stars, sexual partners are just the way of life. 

Zayn doesn't pink under such compliments like Liam constantly feels on the verge of doing. The attention Liam's giving him is of the kind he already has memorized, is about to feel a thousand fold on the stage awaiting them.

Zayn takes a step towards Liam, then another. The redness on Liam's face multiplies when Zayn brings the pad of his thumb to Liam's mouth, eyes so obviously drawn into thought. "Really," he says, slipping the digit into Liam's mouth with little force, "because I was just thinking about how incredible you've been looking all day. You really kept yourself away from me this time, Li. You did a number on me." 

Liam must've closed his eyes, because everything else happens at once and he catches none of it. Zayn is gone, when he finally returns, and a short man with a microphone is asking him if he'd like to be escorted to his spot. Incidentally, there's a small black folding chair just a few meters out of sight of the audience. Liam thanks the man, distantly thinking that he must be the stage manager. The opening acts go back and forth across the stage but don't hold Liam's attention, thoughts helplessly drifting back to when Zayn's breath was in his face and his eyes were on his mouth. He finds himself ghosting his fingers over his lips from where Zayn had touched them minutes before.

Liam isn't naive. The reason for them being the way they are lies on his shoulders, despite what assumptions might be made. Zayn asked him once, almost two years back, on a balcony in Madrid. Liam had taken the train to meet Zayn on his mid-tour break, and they spent the two weekdays building a little world inside their hotel room. Liam remembers clearly that neither of them had been wearing much of anything, not feeling the need to if their clothes would just be thrown on the floor in a matter of time. It was the first time Zayn told him he loved him, in the still grey air of the evening. He told him with no break in his voice or hesitance in his eyes. Liam remembers how fearless he had felt up on that balcony, as if the world could've turned against them and that's exactly where they would've stayed. 

Such a feeling has never lasted inside of him. Not since Liam was a boy, not since he graduated, and most certainly not since he began playing for Man United. He's always envied Zayn's fierce insistence on who he is, on shoving back twice as hard whenever someone questions this. His sexuality has been commodified along with everyone else's in the industry, but he's never let it define him. The women and men in his life have never lasted long in the eyes of the public- it's only a small cog in the machine of Liam's hesitance.

Liam learned a long time ago that pro football and liking lads to not equate in the traditional sense. He remembers being shoved around before practice just to be chased home afterwards. It wasn't so much the words that followed him that got down to his soul, dug such a deep place in his gut, as the menace behind them. He knows the language of his game, and that masculinity in its every aspect is questioned on a daily basis. Anything that disrupts the balance is a liability, foul and fucked and dirty. 

But when Zayn kisses his neck, bites into his shoulder, whispers into his ear, fucks into his mind and eats away his soul, he feels a sense of cleanness in the very center of his chest. The strength of the sense overpowers him past any brink, and he feels bound by it in away that those words never could bind him. Zayn, in all of his reckless glory, is unfathomably pure. Together they are.

Liam feels as though he's watching the concert on film, not concerned in the slightest with the jostling crowd or the strenuous opening acts. He feels miles away from it all, like he's tethered to a cloud somewhere above the stadium and all he can see is a blur. He doesn't register that the set's over until he feels a pair of arms wind around his waist from behind. It takes him by surprise so much that he exhales harshly, and he can feel the laugh pressed against his back when Zayn reacts. Licking delicately across his neck and then biting on his ear, Zayn whispers a harsh "wish me luck," slaps Liam's bum, and bounds in front of Liam until the lights are flushing him and the crowd is roaring. 

Zayn mills about a bit on stage while he's waiting for the fans to die down, swaggering about with a bottle of water and surveying what he can see of the largely washed out crowd. Liam doesn't see Zayn look at him once, not when he starts up the first note of the first song to when he's asking the audience questions at the end of the show. It's utterly ridiculous, and normally Liam wouldn't let himself entertain the thought- but he feels Zayn. He feels sparks of adrenaline in his chest like he's out there onstage at his side, catering to the crowd and seducing the music. He rides the rush of excitement that the terror brings, like when he's lined up in formation waiting for a game to begin. He feels him up until the final song, and when he looks out into the audience, phone screens light up the dark like stars. 

There's a deafening roaring of Zayn's name when the lights go out. It envelops Liam, because what little light backstage was cut out once the set went off. Liam nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels Zayn up against him. This time he isn't so physical, but Liam can hear him breathing, can in turn breathe him in. 

"Liam." 

"Zayn." 

"They're calling for you, out there." Eyes starting to adjust to the dark, Liam sees the glint in Zayn's expression and the curl of his lips. 

"You think I should go do one more song?" Zayn asks. He's livid with energy, almost bursting as he shifts back and forth. 

"Go." Liam cocks his head and Zayn's smile spreads. 

Zayn's body nods once in affirmation, and before Liam's mind can catalog every little cell, every blood vessel and neuron alight- Zayn kisses him, and runs back out to his waiting crowd. 

\--

When they first met, Liam was still club. He hadn't met Beckham, and he'd only kissed one bloke. Zayn was big in England, but he hadn't quite made it across the channel. He hadn't been diluted by the labels, and his creativity was unlimited and untouched. Back then he'd play shows in dingy bars with his friend named Harry, who half the time was only wearing his boxers. One of Liam's mates dragged him into one such club in Leeds, because they'd just arrived to meet with a sponsor the next day. He remembers the red lights of the stage and how they played across Zayn's skin, breaking across some barrier in Liam's mind without him even knowing. In the front row Liam watched Zayn unwind himself completely, break himself down and put himself together in a matter of an hour. 

When the show ended, Liam's whole body seemed like it was throbbing with the entirety of the night. He needed to breathe, somehow, to let himself expel this energy before he lost complete claim to himself. His friend had ducked off to the bar somewhere in the middle of the set, but the bar had mostly cleared out, so he set out into the night to find him.

Not quite looking where he was going, Liam collided with a warm body as the cold air of the night hit him in the wake of the closed door. 

"Oh! Sorry, mate," Liam began, shifting out of the way. 

"No problem." Up close, he lights didn't dance on Zayn's skin. Liam felt as though he could see them working under the surface, a constant flutter and magnitude that was visible in every piece of him. He took his breath away, quite honestly, or whatever was left after their collision. 

"Not that I'm upset or anything, but this isn't really supposed to be open to the public." Zayn started, jerking his thumb back at a sign that Liam has missed on the door. He instantly felt his face heating up, just coming into his consciousness after being knocked out of it during the set. 

"Oh god, I'm so- sorry, I wasn't trying to get backstage or anything-" Liam was definitely getting ahead of himself, but Zayn didn't seem pissed. In fact, his light stance and curling lip suggested he was more amused than anything. 

"Hey mate, I said don't worry. Just a smoking balcony. Not in me knickers or anything." So Liam definitely wasn't imagining his smile. 

"Still. Sorry, I'm just looking for my friend?" It came out sounding more like a question than a defense. Zayn nodded in thought, then swiped his finger over his mouth. His lips were strikingly red, in the wash of alley lights, and Liam felt like an incredible creep for noticing. 

"Don't think he's out here, mate. But if he's not in there," Zayn jerks his head towards the door, "come find me. Hate to see you spend the night all by yourself." And with that, Zayn was off. 

Needless to say, Liam didn't spend the night alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Planes by Jerimih.
> 
> There is another chapter and I will be posting the next chapter very very soon so please don't kill me in the meantime even though I definitely deserve it :)


End file.
